Conceiving Of Carbon

by Pejman Yousefzadeh on December 1, 2009

Willian Happer writes that carbon is getting a bad rap, and we ought to be less concerned about it than we are; read the whole essay. To the extent that we need to worry about carbon emissions, I continue to think that a carbon tax that is tied to the three-year average change in global tropical temperatures, and refunded through income or payroll tax cuts (so as to prevent government from realizing a perverse incentive to continue pumping carbon into the atmosphere) would be a good idea. We could alternatively peg a tax to the price produced via a futures market for temperature indicators. Anything would be better than the currently conceived cap and trade scheme, which would only serve to pass costs associated with retrofitting down to the consumer, and would–as others have said–combat carbon emissions with what amount to papal indulgences.